


A Ghost's Right

by MercuryGray



Category: 18th Century CE RPF, 20th Century CE RPF
Genre: Gen, Ghosts, Historical References, World War I
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-27
Updated: 2017-07-27
Packaged: 2018-12-07 12:28:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,033
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11623539
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MercuryGray/pseuds/MercuryGray
Summary: He will always be the Commander in Chief, and that means where there is a war and an American army, he will be there. George Washington is following the Army in the interest of going to see an old friend.





	A Ghost's Right

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Snapdragonroar](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Snapdragonroar/gifts).



> Since the 100th anniversary of the "Lafayette, We Are Here" speech was this year - 2017 - I've been spending a lot of time talking to people about the centennial, about why Lafayette's important, and speculating on what he would have thought of the AEF in 1917 while they were making that parade. (Not much.)
> 
> Then I kind of backtracked and stuck Ghost!George in there. You know. Like you do.

_...A ghost may come; _

_ For it is a ghost's right, _

_ His element is so fine _

_ Being sharpened by his death, _

_ To drink from the wine-breath _

_ While our gross palates drink from the whole wine. _

_ -All Souls’ Night, W.B. Yeats _

 

\---

  
  


It wasn't the first time he'd packed himself into a traveling case, and he doubted it would be the last. A ghost, after all, must have some occupation, and this was his, in times of war - to go along with the commanding officer and give what little spectral support he could. 

 

The ghost of General Washington must be worth something, when it comes to fighting wars.

 

He'd brought his own ghosts with him on campaign - some were helpful and most were not, and in the quiet hours of the night he often found it was the helpful ones who fled. But he would not flee, nor abandon his charges - grown men or not, they'd have need of any help they could get, leading an army. 

 

After all, didn't he?

 

It was cold, in the tomb at Mount Vernon. It was cold, and there was Martha, but she tired of idleness in death and insisted they go abroad, to see his city, his country. She took to drifting around the White House, drawing attention to flecks of dust and making sure the dinner didn't come to the table cold, the consummate hostess even from beyond the grave. 

 

And that left George with an idleness of his own. 

 

Washington the ghost had never cared for Washington the city  - too many politicians, too much foul air. But when it burned - oh, he had to admit a little sadness then. He watched poor little Mrs. Madison bully his painting out of the White House and wondered, idly, what Henry Dearborn might do about the whole affair. The young man'd done quite a bit of growing up since Washington had seen him last - but then, everyone he knew was getting gray about the temples and heavy around the waist.

 

So he went and found him, in his campaign tent, surrounded by officers and a mile of paperwork with steam practically coming out of his ears.

 

And for the first time since he'd been out of his tomb, George felt perfectly at home.

 

He studied maps over shoulders, whispered suggestions in the ears of the aides and was delighted when some actually repeated them aloud, surprised by their own boldness and sudden genius. And there was no going back after that. Every skirmish, every border war and backcountry brawl, General Washington was there, in spirit.  He floated back and forth between armies during the War between the States, torn between General Lee's southern kinship and General Grant's no-nonsense approach to soldiering, dived into someone's luggage heading out to the Indian Country, and hitched a ride with that fellow Roosevelt's dispatch cases on the way to Cuba. (What did this country have about making their generals into presidents, anyway? A hundred years, and he was still perplexed that there should be any common ground between the two.)

 

Hither and yon over mountains and flats, rivers and valleys, deserts and prairie, all over this great, wide, crazy country that he had somehow helped bring into being - but never across an ocean before. That was new. (The Philippines had seemed to far; he'd waited that one out in San Francisco in the Presidio.) He had, on the whole, found Wilson's policy of non-intervention to be a sensible one, but there was a great sadness, too, in his heart, reading the newspapers... counting the dead. This country, he felt, had a great personal debt to France. Should they now abandon them to the ravages of a war unlike any of the wars that had been fought before? 

 

Which was why he had secreted himself away in a box of radio equipment marked GENERAL PERSHING'S HEADQUARTERS AEF and stowed away in the hold of a ship bound for Saint-Nazaire, letting himself out only when they'd cleared the international line and everyone found themselves free to smoke and discuss where they'd be going next. 

 

And there were women on this boat! American women! Going as nurses and telephone operators and heaven knows what else. They were not the unwashed hoydens of his day, certainly; he heard them at tea practicing their French, watched them in the salon writing letters home and reading. The best of what the country could offer - with college degrees, some of them. And easier to manage, sometimes, then the men, efficient, conscientious and - wonders never ceasing - punctual.

 

What a terribly modern age they were in.

 

He found it pitiful that none of Pershing's officers spoke French. Most of his French allies hadn't spoken any English when they'd arrived - but at least some had tried to learn on the boat. Tipping French grammars off the shelves in front of idle ADCs didn't seem to help matters, either, but then, a Trans-Atlantic crossing wasn't what it had been a hundred and forty years ago. Not much was, now that he came to it, watching Pershing dictate a letter home to an eager private on a typewriter. Oh, Hamilton would have killed for one of those - and carbon paper to keep copies, and a fountain pen that didn't need an inkwell, and...

 

Well, but they had won their war, hadn't they, despite these deficiencies? He contented himself with that and tried not to feel prickly when the officers drank a toast to him at dinner, saluting the victories they had yet to win. He frowned upon that sort of thing.  

 

How small and insignificant they looked, streaming off the boat into the port. A division - a mere division, in this war of twenty million men, and those twenty-thousand men as green as grass. The first of many, it was promised. But they were  _ coming, coming, the drums rum-tuming everywhere. We'll be over, we're coming over, and we won't come back till it's over over there.  _

 

He did have to admit a certain fondness for the new style in music. It was -what was the word? Catchy.  _ I love to listen to the Dixie strain, I long to see the girl I left behind... _ That much had not changed - he still loved a good dance tune, or a march, when the mood was on him. _ I want to hear a Yankee Doodle tune, played by a military band... _

 

In his day he’d had to make do with a fifer and a collection of drums, and those only out of expedience. There was a full brass section somewhere in the hold of one of these ships, ready, willing and able to pound out whatever Yankee Doodle tune Pershing required. 

 

Not that John J. Pershing was one for marching tunes. No, George found that the present commander of the American Army had little need for fortitude or strength of heart or the thrill of a crashing cymbal where the business of the army itself was concerned - his needs were of a different kind, the kind that begins writing letters only to stop, that looks with longing on a picture frame still wearing its black ribbon, that, in the silence of a dark cabin, finally finds the space to cry.

 

It was a terrible thing, to lose a wife and children so. And to a fire, while he was down on the Mexican border - a fire in the place where he had left them so they would be safe! George never lost any children of his own, but he had lost Patsy, as dear to him as his own daughter, and he remembered enough about disappointed hopes, and so he filled himself with consolation and laid his hands upon the General’s shoulders, hoping it would help. Sometimes he thought it did. He wished Martha were here - she was always better at that kind of thing, and a woman’s presence after such an ordeal might have helped him more.

  
(He remembered another man who’d lost a child, while he was far away - but there were other children after for consolation.) 

 

Pershing let his work consume him, working like a demon and expecting the same from his men, a force of nature in constant motion. From the moment they docked in Saint Nazaire, he was unstoppable, moving from one meeting to the next. It was almost hard work for George to keep up, and he didn’t have to take time to eat or sleep.

 

No, Pershing didn’t want fanfares or parades - he wanted only to do his job. But some parades were necessary - even George knew that. A little fanfare every once in a long while did an army good - reminded them of the goodness of their cause, the high hopes their nation had for them. When the French proposed a parade for the Fourth of July, George leaned heavily on John’s shoulders and thought  _ Say Yes.  _ He could hear Pershing’s thoughts,  _ But they can’t march, they’re hardly ready, what will the French think?  _ And still he urged  _ Yes.  _ And the reply went back - The AEF will be happy to oblige.

 

And in front of all those cheering crowds and waving flags, those boys looked around at the soul of a nation, pinning every hope on them, and they marched better than they’d ever marched before. Down the Champs Elysees, down the great broad boulevards of Paris, so young, so fit, so strong and ready and clean, the boys of summer,  _ so prepare, say a prayer, send the word, send the word, to beware, we’ll be over, we’re coming over, and we won’t come back till it’s over over there.  _ Up the avenues, past businesses and houses and cheering crowds, into a quieter part of the city, stopping outside an unassuming little cemetery with its unassuming little gate.

 

Yes, George thought. This is the place. This is what he’d been waiting for.

 

Of course there were speeches - first in French, and then from the American contingent. George had read the notes on Pershing’s desk that morning, assured him in every way he knew that this was the right thing to let Charles Stanton read. (In this he and Pershing were the same - he never much cared for making speeches, either.)

 

The speech begins, resonantly. “ I regret I cannot speak to the good people of France in the beautiful language of their own fair country. The fact cannot be forgotten that your nation was our friend when America was struggling for existence....”

 

And on Stanton went. Men shifted on their feet. A bird moved in a nearby tree. But this was not a politician, trotting out some tired lines - this was... new, and heartfelt. People began to pay more attention. Stanton continued speaking, entirely in English - the crowd, watching, seemed to tremble with excitement, not knowing what he said but moved by it, all the same. And in the air behind him, unseen by all except the dead, a curtain seemed to part, a shadow grew substantial -  the shadow of the illustrious dead. If George still had a heart it would have been racing - if he could have cried, his eyes would have been full of tears. So close now! So close!

 

The speech was at its zenith now, the spell almost wound up. Stanton gestured like a great orator, almost carried away himself by the power of his words. The crowd around him stood, transfixed.  “Lafayette,” he announced, facing the tomb with resolution in his voice, addressing the nation through the man,  “We are here!”

And there he was, beside his tomb. The same young man that George knew once, his uniform pristine. And he was smiling. The crowds mattered little now, the speeches even less. Here it was just the two of them, brought together once again.

 

“Gilbert.” “Mon General.” They clasp hands and then embrace, as a father does his prodigal son. 

 

“You came.”

 

George had to frown at that, looking back over the now dispersing crowd, soldiers and civilians both, a sea of black intermingled, here and there, with a dash of khaki. Twenty-thousand men, as green as grass, in this war where so many have already died. “I only wish I had brought more with me.”

  
  



End file.
